1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a superconductor of a ceramics superconductive material, and more particularly, it relates to a method of manufacturing a superconductor by a floating zone method, i.e., the FZ method.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, a ceramics superconductive material has been watched as a material presenting a higher critical temperature. A superconductor having a desired configuration is obtained from such a ceramics superconductive material generally by a sintering process of compacting a ceramics powder material and then sintering the same. After the compacting step, calcining may be performed in advance of the sintering, as the case may be.
In the aforementioned sintering process, however, manufacturable configurations of the superconductor are limited. Further, a dense superconductor cannot be easily obtained because of voids which are left after sintering. In addition, it is difficult to control the crystal structure of the superconductor in the sintering process. Due to such factors, therefore, it has been impossible to attain high critical current density in the superconductor obtained by the sintering process.